Vlambeer's Luftrausers delayed due to certification troubles

The arcade shooter Luftrausers was supposed to release in the spring, but developer Vlambeer has run into unexpected road blocks, and the game is on hold once again.

Studio co-founder Rami Ismail wrote in a blog post today that the game is on delay for another month at least: "The long version is: It turns out that certification is harder than you expect even when you have been warned that it’s harder than you think."

He said the developer underestimated the Technical Requirement Compliance process, which is "weirdly intricate," because this is its first console release. "This is not a dig towards Sony, who have been absolutely great towards us and are absolutely accomodating [sic] and trying to help us out, it’s just a reality we’ll have to deal with for now," wrote Ismail.

Devolver Digital, which is assisting with the game's release, has hired an extra QA team to facilitate this process. Even so, it won't launch immediately.

"We’ve promised everybody – fans and platforms – that it’ll launch simultaneously on all platforms, and we’re never making that promise again," wrote Ismail.

"We really ought to stop estimating release dates that early in development ... we keep tweaking and fixing things until the game is as close to perfect as we can get it. Slamming a date onto something like that isn’t really helping anyone."